"I must tell Mr. Beale," said Dickie; "he'll be anxious if I don't."
"Shall I hurt you if I put you on my back?" Lord Arden asked, and next minute he was carrying Dickie down the slope towards Arden Castle, while Edred went back to Beale's cottage to say where Dickie was. When Edred got back to Arden Castle tea was ready in the parlor, and Dickie was resting in a comfortable chair.
"Isn't old Beale a funny old man?" said Edred. "He said Arden Castle was the right place for Dickie, with a face like that. What could he have meant? What are you doing that for?" he added in injured tones, for Elfrida had kicked his hand under the table.
Before tea was over there was a sound of horses' hoofs and carriage wheels in the courtyard. And the maid-servant opened the parlor door and said, "Lady Talbot." Though he remembered well enough how kind she had been to him, Dickie wished he could creep under the table. It was too hard; she must recognize him. And now Edred and Elfrida, and Lord Arden, who was so kind and jolly, they would all know that he had once been a burglar, and that she had wanted to adopt him, and that he had been ungrateful and had run away. He trembled all over. It was too hard.
Lady Talbot shook hands with the others, and then turned to him. "And who is your little friend?" she asked Edred, and in the same breath cried out--"Why, it's my little runaway!"
Dickie only said: "I wasn't ungrateful, I wasn't--I had to go." But his eyes implored.
And Lady Talbot--Dickie will always love her for that--understood. Not a word about burglars did she say, only--
"I wanted to adopt Dickie once, Lord Arden, but he would not stay."
"I had to get back to father," said Dickie.
"Well, at any rate it's pleasant to see each other again," she said. "I always hoped we should some day. No sugar, thank you, Elfrida"--and then sat down and had tea and was as jolly as possible. The only thing which made Dickie at all uncomfortable was when she turned suddenly to the master of the house and said, "Doesn't he remind you of any one, Lord Arden?"
And Lord Arden said, "Perhaps he does," with that sort of look that people have when they mean: "Not before the children! I'd rather talk about it afterwards if you don't mind."
